The present application relates to data content processing. There is a continually increasing number of terminals in use today, such as mobile telephones, PDAs with wireless communication capabilities, personal computers, self service kiosks and two-way pagers. Software applications which run on these terminals increase their utility. For example, a mobile phone may include an application which retrieves the weather for a range of cities, or a PDA may include an application that allows a user to shop for groceries. These software applications take advantage of the connectivity to a network in order to provide timely and useful services to users. However, due to the restricted resources of some terminals, and the complexity of delivering large amounts of data for processing to the terminals, developing and maintaining data processing capabilities of software applications remains a difficult and time-consuming task.
Extended Markup Languages, such as XML, have become a standard for presenting, formatting and exchanging generic data. Being implemented by virtually all platforms and environments, XML allows seamless integration of heterogeneous systems using common data interfaces. XML processing is supported by core programming languages, XML-based languages (e.g. XPATH, XQUERY) and script language extensions (e.g. ECMAScript for XML—E4X).
Data can be stored in a wide variety of formats, and it is recognized that not all terminals have the resources for storing the appropriate Application Program for processing and/or viewing the data as defined in a particular format. In some instances, the terminal will not recognize the format that the data is represented in, and therefore the user of the terminal may be required to select or obtain the appropriate Application Program. A further disadvantage of current data formats is that an older version of an Application Program may not recognize an updated data format, thereby resulting in the inability of the older application version to process or display the updated data.
Systems and methods of dynamic processing of data content are disclosed herein to obviate or mitigate the above presented disadvantages.